42 of the Best Commercial Linux Games
Are there many high quality commercial games
available for Linux? That's one of the frequently asked
questions we
receive in our mailbox every week.
It is true to say that the number of commercial games released
for
Linux each year remains small compared to other platforms.
Nevertheless, we faced lots of difficult choices
compiling a
list of 42 of the best commercial Linux games. The selection
we
have finally chosen covers a wide range of different game
genres, so hopefully there will be something here that will interest
all.
To be eligible for inclusion in this list each game needed to
be:
Released under a proprietary license with a fee required either to
purchase the game, or a monthly charge
Not require Wine to run. Wine is a compatibility layer
for running Windows software
Probably the best known game developer in the industry
supporting
Linux is id Software. They have ported many of their star titles to
Linux, including Quake 4 and Doom 3. The
other major innovator in the video game industry is Epic Games.
They produced one of the all time classics, Unreal
Tournament 2004, which we agonised over whether to include, but the
list was already heavyweight in quality action games.
In any feature on Linux commercial games, there also deserves
to be
a special mention for Loki Entertainment Software. Between 1998 and
2001, they ported a number of games to Linux, almost
all to an extremely high standard. Classic titles that spring to mine
include Heretic II, Quake III Arena (featured below), Soldier of
Fortune, Tribes 2, Myth II: Soulblighter, and Heavy Gear II.
Following in Loki’s footsteps, Linux Game Publishing was
established in 2001 to port commercial games to
Linux. Their first port was Creatures: Internet Edition.
Advocates of free software may dislike the presence of
commercial games. However, having
Linux games released commercially sometimes indirectly benefits gamers
who
prefer, or can only afford, to play freeware games. The most
notable example of an awesome commercial game that was subsequently
released as freeware is Wolftenstein:
Enemy
Territory.
Other high quality free Linux games were
covered in our features, 42
of the Best Free Linux games and 42
More of the Best Free Linux Games.
Please appreciate that the list below is constantly evolving,
and only represents a current snapshot. There are some very exciting
games to be released shortly for Linux. Watch out for Rage,
Unreal Tournament 3, Sacred Gold, Jack Keane, X3: Reunion, and
Celetania in particular. It's highly probable all of these
games will feature in a later 'Best of 42' article.
Now, let's scrutinize the 42 games at hand. For each game we
have compiled its own portal page, providing
screenshots of the game in action, a full description of the game, with
an in-depth analysis of the features of the game, together with links
to relevant
resources and reviews.
Last Updated Sunday, June 15 2008 @ 03:34 PM EDT
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